Hoover Dam explosion! I remember a convo recently about this possibly being a target 🤔
(media.greatawakening.win)
👀 EYES ON! 👀
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I live in an older neighborhood. My house always had real AC but all around me everyone had swamp coolers. Every year a few more people would move up to AC and the first time the temp went over 110 the nearest pole transformer would blow up because the AC takes so much more power, then the whole block would be without electricity. Scared me the first couple of times I heard it, like a big skyrocket only down close. Eventually all the old transformers were replaced and it doesn't happen so often anymore. A hospital near me, also built in the 50s, had all their transformers in a little building to the side of the main hospital. One summer a transformer blew up and started a fire which cause all the other transformers to blow up, it was a real disaster but fortunately no one was hurt. However, the hospital had to be evacuated, about 200 patients, no elevators, ICU on the top floor so the patients with machine support had to be carried down steps and manually ventilated, or whatever. A real miracle everyone got out without incident.
Oh yes. Swamp coolers are the inexpensive way to cool a living space.
I admire the increased efficiency. I had one growing up in Arizona. Their only flaw was they cool by moistening the air. June/July is monsoon season, when much of Arizona gets its annual allotment of rain all at once. This increases the humidity, rendering swamp coolers ineffective during the part of the year you most care to run them.
I didn't realize until recently that before air conditioning was a common thing, in the 1960s my mom use to cool the house using box fans. This was in the Midwest and on hot humid days she'd close all the windows and pull the drapes closed. If it wasn't for the humidity in the air I don't think it would have worked. It acted like a swamp cooler in a way.